Hey big spenders! Georgia O'Keefe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1" sold for $44 million on Thursday from the auction house Sotheby's. The mind-blowing number marks the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting by a woman. Time to pop some bottles ... right?

For most people, $44 million dollars is nothing to sneeze at and yet, the art world is abuzz with both glee and disappointment at the staggering sum.

Consider Paul Cezanne's "Card Players," a painting that sold at auction for $259 million in 2011 or Pablo Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," which sold for $106.5 million in 2010. Both of those paintings reached astronomical numbers and in comparison, $44 million sounds more like chump change (well, relative chump change).

So what gives? The visual art world – like many industries – faces a sexism problem. When women artists are treated with less respect to their male counterparts, their work is devalued.

Consider the fact that Taylor Swift still fights against this as a singer-songwriter. Our girl has been in the game since she was a young teen and yet she still only gets a fraction of the critical glory for her skills as a fierce pop songwriter as uber-producers like Dr. Luke or even Diplo. Seems pretty unfair ... especially when you look at her unstoppable sales numbers.

How can we change this situation? For one, we'll need to change the way we look at and relate to art in all forms. As art critic Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian, "when someone pays out millions for a painting it is not a sombre investment but an act of love and self-discovery: a way to say who you are and what you believe in."

If that is the case, we should pay more attention – and more respect – to the people who've created that art, whether it be a painting or a really, really catchy pop song.